
Braden Lepisto's hold was wobbly, and the first field-goal attempt of freshman kicker Andrew Samson's Penn career plonked off the upright on Saturday. Right away, Quakers coach Al Bagnoli realized he hadn't given enough thought to one variable.
It was Lepisto's first hold in a game since his sophomore year of high school. Not exactly a pristine supporting cast for the debut of Samson, who had been called on to turn around Penn's field-goal unit.
Like most problems with the kicking game, it went unnoticed until something went wrong. Such is the life of a kicker, where the slightest miscalculation turns triumph into tragedy and vice versa. It's the kind of thing that keeps even the best kickers on edge.
Few have seen the highs and the lows as clearly as Derek Zoch. He beat out classmates for the job, but his field-goal struggles last year opened up a spot for Samson. Zoch likely won't get on the field in his senior year, but he contributes to the team through the four young kickers - Samson, A.J. Nobile, Trevor Charlston and Dave Kuncio.
"When I walked off after my first field goal, . [Zoch] told me to keep my head up," Samson said. "He's been there before, and unfortunately it didn't work out for him a lot of times last year. So he knew what it felt like to miss one, and now I know what it feels like to miss one."
"I know it's kind of an awkward dynamic, given everything, but to [Zoch's] credit he's done a nice job," Bagnoli said.
In a season where one game has already come down to the kick, and where another likely will as well, the kickers are constantly reminded that a few inches here and a few degrees there can rob a player of his job.
Samson said that the same way a golfer would try to use the same swing for both a 300-yard drive or a shot half that distance, he tries to kick an extra point and field goal identically. Something out of the ordinary produces a miss, like the moving target he faced in his first kick against Lafayette or the headwind he faced when he missed the second.
"Hopefully this week, it won't happen again," Samson said.
But he can never control the weather, or the snap, or the hold. And sometimes they can't all be top-notch. As inexperienced as Lepisto is at holding, he now has three more holds than his backup on the depth chart, sophomore Kyle Derham, who has zero.
Samson will hope that the circumstances leading up to the next moment his foot meets the ball are a bit better. If that happens, at least he can control his own kicking fate.
"It's one of those high-reward-high-risk positions," Bagnoli said. "You make [the kick], everybody loves you. You miss it, everybody says, 'Oh you know, he's a kicker.' "
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